If NASA faked the moon landings, does the agency have any credibility at all? Was the Space Shuttle program also a hoax? Is the International Space Station another one? Do not dismiss these hypotheses offhand. Check out our wider NASA research and make up your own mind about it all.

I thought I might start a thread encompassing the general miscellaneous silliness and baloney that NASA spews on an almost daily basis. Things that might not warrant an entire thread but are worthy of note and at least good for a chuckle.

... which was posted here as the 14th photo of the series with the caption:

Saturn and Three Moons - Credit: NASA/JP - Saturn and three moons, Tethys, Dione and Rhea, seen by a Voyager spacecraft on August 4, 1982, from a distance of 13 million miles.

So, per NASA, this is a photo taken by a Voyager spacecraft in 1982 from a distance of 13 million miles. Wow! That's some impressive lensmanship! And, done with 1977 technology too! The same year that the Apple II computer was introduced ...

And, the 1977 Firebird muscle car ...

And, Rod Stewart had the #1 hit song:

... I'm impressed!

The Voyager spacecraft were launched in 1977 and are still out there at the edge of our solar system, says NASA, so this 13-million mile photo was taken with 1970s era technology and then beamed back to Earth via NASA's incredible radio communications system over a distance of millions of miles. And, of course, no stars are visible even though the faintly illuminated specks of Saturn's moons from 13 million miles away are quite visible in the photo.

I'm not sure why this photo was included in an article about the Cassini Mission since it is part of the much earlier Voyager hoax mission ... but there you go.

But, there is something strange here. If I load the above image into my old Photoshop 7 and merely bring up the levels (make it uniformly brighter) so we can peer into the darkness of space, I get this:

My, my! What are those odd rectangles doing in space? I guess Saturn must have been passing through one of those weird dimensional time warp thingies that the Star Ship Enterprise was always running into! And, kinda funny how Saturn's moons are all in a separate rectangle of their own too, huh?

You don't think the image was, you know, manipulated or anything, do you?

We supposedly have a bad guy Bo Jiang a Chinese national scientist employed by a NASA contractor outed by Congressman Rep. Frank Wolf, R-VA last week. I guess Bo heard the Congressman out him and then decided to buy a one way ticket to China.

So what did Bo do? The FBI is “investigating conspiracies and substantive violations of the Arms Export Control Act,” according to the FBI’s arrest warrant.

"Ronda Squizzero, an FBI Special Agent said in documents Wolf made available today concerning Jiang’s arrest that he “was leaving the United States abruptly to return to China on a one-way ticket.”"

"Jiang also is charged with making a false statement to federal law enforcement agents, including his attempt to conceal a “laptop, and old hard drive and a SIM card,” according to the FBI agent." -- yea, I can see a smart guy NASA employee toting around a big old hard drive when he could put the same data on a terabyte flash drive. It only gets more ridiculous. I cannot believe I used to fall for this mess.

Maybe a clue. We know there is no ISS or Space Shuttle. Why was Bo arrested? "Wolf also said he believes Jiang’s information “may pertain to the source code for high-tech imaging technology that Jiang has been working on with NASA. This information could have significant military applications for the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army.”" Would that be CGI imaging technology? Such a farcical story.

Walker has said he was inspired to write the song after an encounter with a street performer in a New Orleans jail and that the song does not refer to the famous stage and movie personality Bill "Bojangles" Robinson. Walker said while in jail for public intoxication in 1965, he met a homeless white man who called himself "Mr. Bojangles" to conceal his true identity from the police. He had been arrested as part of a police sweep of indigent people that was carried out following a high-profile murder. The two men and others in the cell chatted about all manner of things, but when Mr. Bojangles told a story about his dog, the mood in the room turned heavy. Someone else in the cell asked for something to lighten the mood, and Mr. Bojangles obliged with a tap dance.

The little 1977 spacecraft's 35-year-old radio sent back data to NASA from 11 billion miles away which indicates it has entered interstellar space -- or, at least, some other non-solar system place which NASA is calling the "magnetic highway."

Here NASA shows us what this magnetic highway looks like (kinda like the sparks from a big campfire at night):

full link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SYcU3nBj4Q

How they determined its appearance isn't clear. Voyager 1 does supposedly have cameras on board but I can't find any photos that NASA claims it sent back to them.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his team have recovered several Apollo F-1 rocket engines from the bottom of the ocean!

"Finally, I want to thank NASA. They extended every courtesy and every helping hand – all of NASA’s interactions were characterized by plain old common sense, something which we all know is impressive and uncommon. We're excited to be bringing a couple of your F-1s home."

"NASA is one of the few institutions I know that can inspire five-year-olds. It sure inspired me, and with this endeavor, maybe we can inspire a few more youth to invent and explore."

So I showed the Saturn photo to a friend of mine who happens to LOVE NASA. His immediate response was:

You realize that the $100 point & shoot camera in your pocket has direct lineage to the 70s technology that nasa used? you really don't think it was possible for them to stitch together reasonable photos with their massive budget? how else do you think we got to where we are with ccd sensors?

As expected, his response was ridiculous in nature. He basically said that only NASA had access to advanced camera technology and without a telescope, it would be impossible to take such a hi-res image. Nonsense to say the least.

In any case, I found this today and was quite amused.

One of the most enduring and inspiring side effects of space exploration is the pictures -- pictures of Earth taken from new heights; pictures of Earth's neighbors, taken from new angles; pictures that resemble, and in fact are, art. They are magical. They are mysterious. They are weird. They suggest, if they don't fully embody, why we go to the trouble of exploring in the first place.

And they often resemble art of a more earthly variety. Below is a collection of images -- some of them created by prolific space photographer Chris Hadfield, taken from the International Space Station (we'll call those "NASA"), some of them created by nearly-as-prolific painters here on Earth (we'll call those "MOMA"). Here's a game: Can you tell the difference between the two?

NASA announces plan to capture asteroid with "a baggie with a drawstring", by simply 'nuzzling up to it' like you might a kitty cat, or a lover. Then, of course, you "de-spin" it...

According to the TheWeatherNetwork.com...

"The plan would speed up by four years the existing mission to land astronauts on an asteroid by bringing the space rock closer to Earth, Sen. Bill Nelson said.

The robotic ship would capture the 450 metric-ton, 7.6-metre asteroid in 2019.

Then using an Orion space capsule, now being developed, a crew of about four astronauts would nuzzle up next to the rock in 2021 for spacewalking exploration, according to a government document obtained by The Associated Press.

Nelson said this would help NASA develop the capability to nudge away a dangerous asteroid if one headed to Earth in the future. It also would be training for a future mission to send astronauts to Mars in the 2030's, he said.

Once a suitable rock is found, it would be captured with the space equivalent of "a baggie with a drawstring. You bag it. You attach the solar propulsion module to de-spin it and bring it back to where you want it," explained Donald Yeomans, who heads NASA's Near Earth Object program that monitors close-by asteroids.

Yeomans said an asteroid of that size is no threat to Earth because it would burn up should it inadvertently enter Earth's atmosphere. The mission as Nelson described is perfectly safe, hesaid.

"It really is a clever concept,'' Nelson said in a news conference in Florida, the state where NASA launches take place. "Go find your ideal candidate for an asteroid. Go get it robotically and bring it back.''

The government document said the mission, with no price tag at the moment, would inspire because it "will send humans farther than they have ever been before.''

anonjedi2 wrote:As expected, his response was ridiculous in nature. He basically said that only NASA had access to advanced camera technology and without a telescope, it would be impossible to take such a hi-res image. Nonsense to say the least.

In any case, I found this today and was quite amused.

One of the most enduring and inspiring side effects of space exploration is the pictures -- pictures of Earth taken from new heights; pictures of Earth's neighbors, taken from new angles; pictures that resemble, and in fact are, art. They are magical. They are mysterious. They are weird. They suggest, if they don't fully embody, why we go to the trouble of exploring in the first place.

And they often resemble art of a more earthly variety. Below is a collection of images -- some of them created by prolific space photographer Chris Hadfield, taken from the International Space Station (we'll call those "NASA"), some of them created by nearly-as-prolific painters here on Earth (we'll call those "MOMA"). Here's a game: Can you tell the difference between the two?

This Saturn image has always bugged me. Just to be able to get the entire planet in frame, let alone focused,the camera would have to be so far away as to render the image, well, unimaginable. The lighting is also entirely unbelievable. Do these planets even exist? We'll have to take their word for it...

Sisterlover wrote:NASA announces plan to capture asteroid with "a baggie with a drawstring", by simply 'nuzzling up to it' like you might a kitty cat, or a lover. Then, of course, you "de-spin" it...

The team at NASA coming up with this nonsense is the same team which came up with the idea to land a rover on Mars with a flying "Sky Crane." This is NASA private contractor JPL's Advanced Projects Design Team, or "Team X."

The Cassini spacecraft peers through Titan's thick clouds to spy on the region dubbed "Senkyo" by scientists. The dark features include vast fields of dunes, composed of solid hydrocarbon particles precipitated out of Titan's atmosphere. And Titan's southern pole is shrouded in the recently formed polar vortex.

Titan, Saturn's largest moon, is 3,200 miles (5,150 kilometers) across.